NEW PLACE SURVEY

Councils have been ordered to send out surveys demanding local residents' personal information and opinions. The forms will ask householders to give details of their children, mortgage, ethnic background, religion and sexual orientation. Ministers have even given instructions that local councils must try to disguise their involvement in the survey to avoid attracting criticism and they have ruled that the questioning must be paid for out of council tax and carried out every two years.

The New Place Survey, which is expected to be launched next autumn after trials in the spring, is likely to cost at least £15million by 2012. According to a consultation paper distributed by Communities Secretary Hazel Blears, the justification for the survey is that it will let the Government know if councils are hitting scores of new targets imposed on them in the last six months. But the questionnaire does not ask about householders' attitudes to libraries, rubbish collections or schools, all of which are the responsibility of councils.

Instead, it solicits information on whether people think local parents are controlling their children's behaviour properly and whether different ethnic communities in the area are getting on with each other. Questions on ethnicity and sexuality are intended to be used in Government initiatives to promote greater numbers of local councillors from minority groups. Councils are already assembling a database called ContactPoint which will contain details of every child in the country, including information on their health and education.

Information provided for the new council survey will not be protected by basic confidentiality rules. The Department for Communities and Local Government has told town halls there are no guarantees of privacy and that personal data gathered in the questionnaires can be disclosed to third parties. Although respondents are not asked for their names and addresses on the forms, town halls are likely to keep this information with the completed survey data on their computer systems.

The New Place Survey system will replace the Best Value User Satisfaction Survey, which English councils have been conducting every three years since 2000. Local Government Minister John Healey said the survey would be a significant tool for councils and local agencies to measure their performance in important policy areas and to gauge people’s views on issues that should be given top priority. It has been designed to take into account local variations and gives councils and their partners the chance to pose their own questions. (Source: Mail on Sunday, Dec/07)

The New Place Survey (in pdf format) can be downloaded here